We lost twenty-eight days due to illness. Yes, you read that correctly, a total of twenty-eight days of school was missed due to various illnesses. Only three scholars managed to stay healthy, MiniJ, S&T and Tourette. The rest of us were dropping like flies. Knapper started it out by missing four days. I believe Gnu was next as she missed a day so I got to move to the front of the classroom. Next was Uh-Uh-Uh, who hit a temperature of 101 degrees, before her parental units arrived to remove her from school. Grr! was next as he missed three days and Knapper, again fell ill, and missed an entire week. Uh-Uh-Uh return for two days and she was out again. Huey missed a day. Big House missed a day. Grr!, after making it for two days in a row missed an entire week. Grr!'s parental unit sent Gnu a text on his first day of absence stating his temperature reached 104 degrees. Knapper came back for a short time and then missed four more days, as he had hearing related issues. I felt like crap on Tuesday of last week, missed Wednesday, and managed to survive Thursday and Friday. We've had illness in the classroom before but this was just crazy and to make matters worse, we lost a ton of academic time with the Indiana Stupid Testing and Education Process (ISTEP) starting on February 28th.
Two quick items about ISTEP and then I'm going to move on. First, Knapper was placed on the ISTEP bubble by the BigB2. This meant that he had a good chance and passing the math portion of ISTEP and the BigB2 was certain to let Gnu know what her position was on Knapper passing this test. Sadly, Knapper must missed fourteen days of school due to illness, lost all of the scheduled math review time, lost out on taking the ISTEP practice math test and his chances of passing the test just took a serious hit. Next, I received via email, a copy of the ISTEP Examiner's Manual and security form. In order to read the document I had to download it. Because the scholars had not arrived for the day I click on the download button was going to start to read the manual. As I sat at my table waiting for the document to download I thought to myself that it was taking a long time. When the download completed I stated scrolling down the document to see how many pages I had to read. As I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled I thought to my self, this is ridiculous, so I stopped and open up the table of contents. Again, I started to scroll down and this time reached the end quickly only to see that the manual was three hundred and twenty-four pages long. I'll let you decide if I read all three hundred and twenty-four pages.
With ISTEP just around the corner we did have a bit of good news. BigHouse became a Mighty Multiplier as he passed the final phase of learning how to multiple. In order to become a Mighty Multiplier, BigHouse had to correctly answer a combination of multiplication and division problems. There were seventy-two problems in all and he only had six minutes to answer them. He managed to do so with time to spare and has officially joined all of the other scholars in the fourth grade that are Mighty Multipliers. For the record, no student, since my arrival at this school, from an EH classroom has ever met his goal. So yes, this is a really big deal, and both Gnu and I were real excited the day BigHouse passed the test.
S&T was the topic of conversation a short while ago as two events occurred in his life and did so almost simultaneously. The first event was regarding the child advocate that was assigned to S&T. Gnu informed me one morning that she received a very nice letter from S&T's child advocate complementing her on how much S&T has improved in the two years that he has been in her classroom. In fact, the child advocate was so complementary of Gnu that her letter ran on for over a page and a half. Unfortunately, the child advocate's letter ended on a bit of a sad note as she informed Gnu that she was retiring. That's not exactly the type of news that you want to hear especially when I tell you about the next event that took place in S&T's life.
The school day was just about over when there was a knock on the classroom door. I looked over at the door and waved to let the person know that it was alright to enter the classroom. As the classroom door opened, two women walked into the classroom and I had no idea who they were. Gnu saw the two women standing in the back of the room and announced to S&T that his parental unit had just arrived to pick him up from school. Whoa! The lady standing closest to me is S&T's real parental unit and this is the first time I've seen her. So I stood up and walked over to introduce myself. I shook S&T's real parental units hand and then the other women in the room introduced herself to me. Unfortunately, in my surprise at meeting S&T's real parental unit, I didn't catch the other person's name but she did say to me that S&T's just calls her grandma. Right after the hand shaking, S&T arrived in the back of the classroom. He walked up to his mother and said, "I miss you mom." A short while later, S&T left for the day with his real parental unit and the lady he calls grandma.
At the end of the day Gnu informed me as to what was going on with S&T. The real parental unit, who lives out of state, and the reason we've never seen her before, has returned to try and get back custody of S&T. Apparently, a court hearing date has been set for sometime this May. As Gnu and I discussed the situation it became apparent that there was a reason S&T's real parental unit lost custody as she has some baggage. So, now we wait until May to see what happens. As we both wait, we know this, S&T is in the third grade and he is in his ninth school. Since his arrival in our school he has made remarkable improvement based on the information we've received from his now retiring child advocate. Two years worth of work with S&T. During those two years so much progress has been made. During those two years, Gnu will tell you that S&T has gone from a major project to her most favorite student. In May of this year, a court room will decide the fate of S&T. I hope they choose wisely.
One more quick story and then I'm out. Gnu was working on expository stories with all of the scholars. During this one particular lesson, we were reading about the Earth's moon. At one point in the reading, the author mentioned Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon. As Gnu was reading about Neil Armstrong, she started to read his quote as he stepped onto the moon's surface for the first time. "That's one small step for man, one," and before Gnu could continue, Huey spoke up and finished the quote, "one giant leap for mankind." The look on Gnu's face was priceless. I was stunned and for whatever reason, Huey, a second grade scholar, who struggles academically, just finished one of the most famous quotes in NASA's history.
ISTEP begins shortly and the pressure for our scholars to do well will build. Compounding the added pressure of doing well on ISTEP is this little bit a information. On Monday, we are supposed to have a new scholar walk into the classroom. A scholar with a history of fighting with his classmates and spewing forth a string of obscenities when angry. Just exactly what we need as we are about to undertake the most important test of the year. That's it for now. Thank you for following along. Next week will be interesting and you'll know about it in about seven days.
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